


Rosebud

by airdeari



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Canon Rewrite, M/M, Simon Actually Figures Out It Was HIS Mum Dang It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 03:38:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11304906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airdeari/pseuds/airdeari
Summary: Natasha Grimm-Pitch kisses Simon Snow's temple, and tells him to give it to her son. How is he supposed to dothat?A different take on the moment Simon tells Baz about his Visiting and, subsequently, a different take on their first kiss.





	Rosebud

**SIMON**

“What else?” he asks. “Was there anything else?”

I don’t say anything. I pretend to be examining my notes, scanning the page to see if there’s something I forgot to say. There’s something I left out, and it’s not in the notebook. There’s no way I’d forget when she kissed me, and said it was for Baz.

What am I supposed to do? Kiss him on the forehead for her? Christ, why did it have to be _me_?

Then I see the note scrawled in the margin—the half-remembered piece from when I was barely awake enough to hear her. _Simon, Simon … My son, my rosebud boy … I never meant to leave you … He said we were stars …_

“She left, but she came back later,” I say. “Later that night, I mean. She didn’t say anything important—least, I didn’t think it was important—she called my name, and she said…”

I read the words directly from the page so it doesn’t sound so emotional. I don’t want to be part of this. Baz looks so … strange, like this. He looks human. It doesn’t sit right with me.

It’s better when we start arguing about who Nicodemus is and why Baz’s mum came to see me and not him and why he wasn’t at school in the first place. That’s the way Baz is supposed to be. A constant pain in the arse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**SIMON**

“My mother died killing vampires,” he says. “And when they bit her, she killed herself. It’s the last thing she did. If she knew what I am … She would never have let me live.”

“That’s not true,” I say. “She loved you. She …”

I start to sputter the words his mother told me. _Her rosebud boy_. _She never meant to leave him. They were stars._ I pour my heart into every word. I try to say it the way I heard her say it to me. She loved him. She _still_ loves him now, no matter what he’s become. I want him to feel her love.

And it’s like when my spells fall flat because I haven’t said them right. Except I’m not trying to say the words with _magic_. I’m trying to put _love_ into them.

I know they’re not working, because Baz still looks gaunt and pale and already dead. I hear my voice hanging dead in the air, drowned out by the crackling fire creeping closer. Sharp shadows dance across his face as he lifts his head and won’t quite look me in the eye.

“She loved what I _was_!” he shouts. “I’m not that boy anymore. I’m one of them now.”

He’s more than that. She doesn’t just love the rosebud boy, the one she had to leave. She loves him _now_.

Because she told me to give him something.

I grab his jaw. My hands are harsh as I lift his face towards mine, because I’m a little angry, kind of. Angry isn’t the right word. It’s something hot and fierce swirling inside me, but it’s calm, controlled.

“Baz, I’m sorry,” I say. “I should’ve given you this sooner.”

“Given me _what_?” he demands through his bared teeth. He can hardly keep his lips closed over them, they’re so huge and sharp.

I recognize the look on his face. Hot and fierce, but calm, controlled.

I think it’s called _passion_.

“This is—this is from your mum,” I say.

I press my lips to his temple. I kiss him till his head falls away from my mouth. It feels like his whole body’s gone limp.

“My mother?” he barely whispers.

I realize I’ve got tears in my eyes.

If I were good with words, I’d explain how I left this part out when I told him everything she said when she came through the Veil. Or maybe, at the very least, I’d have said something like, “And this is from me.” But the fire is getting closer, and it’s hot, and all I want is for Baz to be loved. I want him to feel it.

I don’t even hesitate when I lift his head to kiss him on the mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**BAZ**

“She told you to kiss me?” I ask.

It’s been a while since that moment in the blazing inferno—not a bad place for a first kiss, if you ask me—but he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “Not exactly,” he says slowly, his legs shifting under the sheets we’re both tangled in. “She … well, she said, ‘Give him this,’ and then she kissed me. On the forehead like that.”

It takes me a while to work up the nerve to ask, “Was that the first time she came, or the second?”

He frowns, trying to remember. He’s killing me.

“It was right before she left the first time, I think,” he says. “She told me everything about Nicodemus, and then she, er, gave me that. And told me to give it to you. And she left.”

Told him to _give_ it to me. Crowley, she really must be watching over me.

“How come?” he asks while I’m still in a daze thinking about it.

I snort and shrug. “How should I know?”

“No, how come you wanted to know whether it was the first time or the second?”

I sigh. I don’t know how he hasn’t figured it out. I wasn’t even there, and I know.

“You said she seemed … different, the second time, didn’t you?” I say.

“Yeah. Like she was really upset.”

“And she called you by name.”

“Yeah.”

“Simon.”

The corners of his lips twitch up when I say his name still. I roll my eyes.

“She said Simon?” I demand impatiently. “Not Snow, or Simon Snow. Just Simon.”

“She said, ‘Simon, Simon.’“

“Does that sound like something my mother, Natasha Grimm-Pitch, Headmistress of Watford School of Magicks, would say to the Mage’s heir?” I ask. “If she knew who you were, Simon Snow, don’t you think she’d sooner call you a miserable slug and a traitor to the World of Mages, like the rest of the Pitches?”

He looks a little shaken, because he doesn’t know where I’m going with this.

“I don’t think the woman who came to you the second time was my mother,” I say.

His eyes go even wider. “Then who _was_ it?”

“Who beyond the Veil would call out your name and call you her rosebud boy?”

When his blank face doesn’t shift for the next ten seconds, I wonder if he’s still too thick to figure it out from here. Then he breathes for the first time in those ten seconds, and there’s a bit of a shudder in his chest when he tries to inhale. He blinks, then again, and he keeps blinking faster but it won’t stop tears from welling up in his eyes.

I lay an arm across his shoulders and pull him back against my chest. I keep my lips behind his ear like I’m prepared to say something soft and reassuring, but I know my voice isn’t going to come.

The kiss was from the first visit. The kiss was from my mother.

Simon clutches the hand I’m holding over his heart. They both love me as I am.


End file.
